La extensión de mi cuerpo (Ilustrado/Bilingüe) Read Online Free PDF Page B

decorum,
    Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made,
    acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
    I mind them or the show or resonance of them — I come and I depart.

10
    A lone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
    Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
    In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
    Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,
    Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my side.
    The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud,
    My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck.
    The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
    I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
    You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.
    I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red girl,
    Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders,
    On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride by the hand,
    She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her feet .
    The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
    I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
    Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
    And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
    And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,
    And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
    And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
    And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
    He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
    I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

11
    T wenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
    Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
    Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.
    She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
    She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.
    Which of the young men does she like the best?
    Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.
    Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
    You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.
    Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather,
    The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.
    The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long hair,
    Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.
    An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
    It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.
    The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
    They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch,
    They do not think whom they souse with spray .

13
    T he negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath on its tied-over chain,
    The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
    His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over his hip-band,
    His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead,
    The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polish’d and perfect limbs.
    I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop there,
    I go with the team also.
    In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as forward sluing,
    To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
    Absorbing all to myself and for this song.
    Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express